State v. James R. Stib, 2017AP3-CR, District 2, 11/15/17 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)
Stib argues his traffic stop was unlawfully prolonged to conduct a dog sniff under Rodriguez v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 1609 (2015). Assuming Stib is correct, suppression of the evidence seized after the dog alerted is inappropriate under the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule because the dog sniff was conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on then-existing precedent, namely, State v. Arias, 2008 WI 84, 311 Wis. 2d 358, 752 N.W.2d 748.
After stopping Stib for speeding the officer called for a drug dog. The state concedes the officer didn’t have reasonable suspicion to suspect other criminal activity that would justify prolonging the traffic stop and that the record suggests the dog sniff took the officer’s attention away from completing the traffic stop, potentially adding time to the stop. (¶¶2-5, 9). Accordingly, the court assumes the seizure of Stib was unlawful because it was “prolonged beyond the time reasonably required to complete th[e] mission’ of issuing a ticket for the violation.” Rodriguez, 135 S. Ct. at 1612 (cited source omitted).
But it’s inappropriate to exclude the evidence found during the prolonged stop because, at the time of the stop, the officer was acting in reliance on Arias:
¶11 Arias allowed for a reasonable delay of a traffic stop for a dog sniff based on the totality of the circumstances. Id., ¶38. Rodriguez altered the state of the law in Wisconsin as it provided that “a traffic stop ‘prolonged beyond’” the “time reasonably required to complete [the stop’s] mission” without reasonable suspicion is unlawful. Rodriguez, 135 S. Ct. at 1615-16 (citations omitted). Rodriguez changed the analysis: instead of questioning whether the delay was reasonable, we now only consider what is a reasonable amount of time to complete the purpose of the original seizure to investigate whether the stop was prolonged. We conclude, however, that as Stib was seized on February 8, 2015, and Rodriguez was decided more than two months later on April 21, 2015, [Officer] Braun acted properly under the then-existing precedent in Arias, and, therefore, the exclusionary rule does not apply. See [State v.] Dearborn, [2010 WI 84,] 327 Wis. 2d 252, ¶¶36, 44[, 786 N.W.2d 97].
